The Phil Collins Big Band

He left Genesis to spend more time with his solo career, but Phil Collins seems barely to have troubled the charts since and thus might well have been advised to keep the day job. Indeed, he seems nostalgic for those days on this, his live jazz album recorded in Paris, where jazz was almost invented. It’s horrible. Perhaps racked with guilt at the pop horrors he committed in the 1980s, Collins has disguised his old hits as though to better smuggle them through customs. Thus Sussudio, deriffed and devocalled, bounds along like an eager if rather stupid puppy; Invisible Touch and That’s All are anonymous and even an old Genesis warhorse like the always-foul Los Endos Suite gets the punishment it’s always deserved. A record that only a jazz-loving Genesis fan who had tired of hearing his favorite music could love. Maybe next time he’ll have a go at The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.